Video: Oliver Sacks Discusses the Hallucinogenic Mind

In this video interview, Oliver Sacks reflects on what he learned from his experiments with drugs, which he describes “Altered States,” his article in this week’s magazine. “Although I can’t claim very lofty motives in my drug taking,” Sacks says, “it did occur to me that there might be a bonus, that the drugs might sensitize me to experiences of the sort my patients could have.” One of these bonuses, he says, is the empathy he gained for hallucinogenic disorders. He also discusses how drugs helped him to understand the behavior of rats that, in laboratory experiments, would ignore even basic survival instincts in order to stimulate the pleasure centers of their brains. “For good and evil,” he says, “I think I experienced, as many people experience, a similar sort of thing.”

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